m1ddy Posted October 30, 2009 Posted October 30, 2009 Hi Guys, I am playing with ESXi as a virtualisation solution and have a quick question about licensing. I installed ESXi 4 no problems. It installs in evaluation mode so it has all the bells and whistles for 60 days. I entered the licnese code I obtained when i downloaded ESXi 4.0 so its a perm license. i dont need all the flashy stuff at the mo, just the hypervisor. I then browsed to the servers IP and downloaded vSphere. Installed this no probs and connected to the host. My question is this....is vSphere free to use? or is it going to stop working after 60 days? Bit confused tbh!! Thankyooooou
ahuxham Posted October 30, 2009 Posted October 30, 2009 vSphere costs, around £540 for the program itself, and you have to bundle support in as well which is circa £160, you can't have the program without support, so you're looking at £700 for vSphere. ESXi 4.0 is free as you stated, code works, but to manage your machines in an easy fashion, you have to purchase vSphere, you could use the CLI to create, change, deploy machines, but you're going to have to read alot of documents to get what you want.
m1ddy Posted October 30, 2009 Author Posted October 30, 2009 Damn Theres no where I can see that it says this. I am not using VCentre server as I only have 1 host so vsphere is connecting straight to it. Is there no other way to create / manage virtual machines and resources other than vsphere?
ahuxham Posted October 30, 2009 Posted October 30, 2009 There is, as I explained earlier, the Command Line Interface. Browse to your ESXi web address and on the right side you have an option for the CLI, you can create and manage your server this way, but its very time consuming and very daunting.
Theblacksheep Posted October 30, 2009 Posted October 30, 2009 (edited) ESXi 4.0 is free as you stated, code works, but to manage your machines in an easy fashion, you have to purchase vSphere, you could use the CLI to create, change, deploy machines, but you're going to have to read alot of documents to get what you want. I dont think you need to purchase it to manage it in an easy fashion if you have only one esx box... You can create VMs etc and manage an ESX box just fine without vcenter etc.... vcenter only becomes usefull with 2 or more ESX boxes. A single ESX box can be managed by vsphere client, web client or command line. vSphere is licenced per CPU now too. Edited October 30, 2009 by Theblacksheep
ahuxham Posted October 30, 2009 Posted October 30, 2009 I dont think you need to purchase it to manage it in an easy fashion if you have only one esx box... You only really need to purchase it, when you have more than 1 IMHO. Its licenced per CPU now tho. Yes, per CPU at the exact costs I mentioned above, and there are only two ways, and I never mentioned vCenter, only vSphere, to completely different products for the job, nor did the OP mention it. vSphere (irregardless of how many hosts you have. the more you have the more vCenter comes into play.) CLI ESXi doesn't have the same GUI on the host machine as ESX doe's so from a Host point of view apart from changing essential operating requirements the interface does nothing else.
Theblacksheep Posted October 30, 2009 Posted October 30, 2009 vSphere (irregardless of how many hosts you have. the more you have the more vCenter comes into play.)CLI web based management too
ahuxham Posted October 30, 2009 Posted October 30, 2009 web based management too So being able to view; Data stores in this hosts inventory & Browse managed objects by this host Constitutes being able to manage the host via a web interface?
m1ddy Posted October 30, 2009 Author Posted October 30, 2009 Seems to be some conflicting answers on this I guess I will just keep using vSphere until it ceases to work. Is there any way to view the vsphere license info? I can only see the ESX license info.
DMcCoy Posted October 30, 2009 Posted October 30, 2009 vCenter server is not the same as the vSphere client that is used to manage a single host. You do however use the same vSphere client to connect to a vCenter server. If you are managing a single host, just browse to it's webpage and download and install the vSphere client. You can only connect to one host at a time and cannot perform actions such as vcb and vMotion. This is included with the ESXi free license and will not require any additional purchases.
m1ddy Posted October 30, 2009 Author Posted October 30, 2009 You Legend DMcCoy. Thats exactly what I wanted to hear. :) We only have 1 ESXi host and all I want to do is manage it using vSphere. vCentre doesn't even come into the mix. I cant do vmotion etc anyway because I have activated the free ESXi license so it is no longer running in evaluation mode.
DMcCoy Posted October 30, 2009 Posted October 30, 2009 My home ESX3i server recently expired it's trial license, unfortunately the license key was on my mail server, a VM. You soon know if the license is not working as you can't start any VMs I had to RDP from my Mac laptop into a server at work to get access to functioning email to get a license key for ESXi in the end!
Theblacksheep Posted October 30, 2009 Posted October 30, 2009 (edited) So being able to view; Data stores in this hosts inventory & Browse managed objects by this host Constitutes being able to manage the host via a web interface? No, because thats not the 'vSphere Web Access', dont worry its not enabled by default. On your esx4 host run: service vmware-webAccess start you'll get a 'VMware server' view of the host where you can manage the VMs and view consoles by going to https://ip.ip.ip.ip/ui. You'll need to modify the service (chkconfig --level 345 vmware-webAccess on) if you want it to enable this 'full-er' web access on boot. @DMcCoy: Mine at home done the same last week, i run of USB so I copied the network config to some local storage and just put a new version on the USB stick and new 2 months. Edited October 30, 2009 by Theblacksheep
somabc Posted October 30, 2009 Posted October 30, 2009 No, on your esx4 host run: service vmware-webAccess start you'll get a 'VMware server' view of the host where you can manage the VMs/data. You'll need to modify the service if you want it to enable this 'fuller' web access on boot. WHAT!? Can you enable this from VSphere?
Theblacksheep Posted October 30, 2009 Posted October 30, 2009 (edited) WHAT!? Can you enable this from VSphere? Login to your ESX host CLI as admin, type that command and try it on a browser.... its not enabled by default. I put the command for enabling it on boot in the above post. Hey, you can also give people URLs to specific VMs... Edited October 30, 2009 by Theblacksheep
DMcCoy Posted October 30, 2009 Posted October 30, 2009 ESX 2.5 had pretty decent web access, vanished in v3 though.
m1ddy Posted October 30, 2009 Author Posted October 30, 2009 Thanks for all the pointers guys. Having a slightly diff problem now... When starting the console window for a VM I have created I get the following error in the console window... "Unable to connect to the MKS: Timeout While attempting read." Any idea what this means? Never used ESXi before, always vmware server and never encountered this error.
Theblacksheep Posted October 30, 2009 Posted October 30, 2009 (edited) When starting the console window for a VM I have created I get the following error in the console window... "Unable to connect to the MLS: Timeout While attempting read." Any idea what this means? Never used ESXi before, always vmware server and never encountered this error. Do you have a DNS record for your host? The hosts needs a DNS record on the DNS server it uses for the console connection to work on clients. The client you are using must have a way of using this DNS server too. Edited October 30, 2009 by Theblacksheep
DMcCoy Posted October 30, 2009 Posted October 30, 2009 What are you connected to the ESXi host with? vSphere client? Web? What version is the client? Are you connecting to the server IP or hostname when you log in to vsphere client?
m1ddy Posted October 30, 2009 Author Posted October 30, 2009 Connecting using vSphere. ESX V4 and vSphere V4. Ahh, the DNS server it was given by DHCP is an infoblox unit. This will need an A record adding?
Theblacksheep Posted October 30, 2009 Posted October 30, 2009 Ahh, the DNS server it was given by DHCP is an infoblox unit. This will need an A record adding? yes indeed.
somabc Posted October 30, 2009 Posted October 30, 2009 Login to your ESX host CLI as admin, type that command and try it on a browser.... its not enabled by default. I put the command for enabling it on boot in the above post. Hey, you can also give people URLs to specific VMs... Is SSH off by default? The trouble is the box is running headless.
Theblacksheep Posted October 30, 2009 Posted October 30, 2009 Is SSH off by default? The trouble is the box is running headless. Yeah it is.... ilo?
m1ddy Posted October 30, 2009 Author Posted October 30, 2009 hmmz The problem I am having is that myself and our DNS server are on a different subnet than the ESX host. We have a Palo Alto firewall bridging the networks and doing the routing. However, sessions can be created from this network to the ESX boxes network, but sessions cannot be created going the other way. Traffic can flow between both subnets but only if the session is created by a host on this subnet. Am i going to have to setup a DNS server on the same subnet as the ESX box? I assume I can keep the ESX hosts as localdomain.
Ignatius Posted October 31, 2009 Posted October 31, 2009 Sorry to jump in with a couple of "minor" questions. I'm almost at the stage of getting my hardware sorted to run ESXi but it's purely for learning purposes - 1 or 2 server OS plus 1 or 2 clients. I don't want or need to deploy anything in the real live situation (yet). 1. I was under the impression that ESXi is free. Is that the case or is there a "slimmed down" free version which can be upgraded for a fee to allow much more functionality? If so, I hope that I could use the free version. If so, is it time-limited? 2. I've read about the VI Client (downloaded from the ESXi server installation to a client) which is used to install guest OSs, access VMs and manage everything. Earlier in this thread, and indeed the title, there is mentioned vSphere. What's the difference between VI Client and vSphere? Apologies if I appear stupid but I want to get everything right in my head so I don't make any major (read expensive!) mistakes.
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